Her Majesty | acoustic
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An acoustic guitar lesson on "Her Majesty" by The Beatles from their 1969 album Abbey Road. It was the last album they recorded together although Let It Be was released after it in 1970.
For me this is the best Beatles album, and one of the best albums ever made! Her Majesty appeared at the very end of the album a full fourteen seconds after "The End" and was not listed on the album cover or the record label, making it one of the first hidden tracks. Here's a Youtube video of the three takes that were recorded for the album. Paul played and sang it at the same time. I found this Robert Johnson video as I was looking into the song. I really don't think Sir Paul stole it, but I'm sure that he was influenced by songs like this when he wrote Her Majesty. I also learned that it was originally part of the "Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" medley. It was between "Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam." Paul had a change of heart at the later stages of mixing and asked the tape engineer (John Kurlander) to cut it out of the tape and throw it away. EMI had a policy that they were never to throw away any tape of anything the Beatles recorded, so the engineer kept it. He added on fourteen seconds of leader, and attached it to the end of the master tape. In my video, I said it was twenty four seconds long, but it's officially listed at twenty three seconds. There are seventeen chords, including six slash chords, three secondary dominant chords and one borrowed chord from the parallel minor! In other words, there's a lot going on in this tiny song! I go over all of this in detail in the lesson. There's also the quirky and unique strumming/finger picking style that Paul uses in most of his acoustic finger picking tunes. If you've played other McCartney songs like "Blackbird" etc., then you'll know what I'm talking about, but if you're new to his technique, it can take a bit to get used to. He only ever uses his thumb and first finger. I really enjoyed working this one out. I thought at first it was going to be really easy, but like a lot of Beatles stuff, there's a lot more going on than you might be aware of! I hope that you enjoy the video and that it helps you to learn this tiny Beatles classic! Cheers, Andy. |
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